Michael Tilson Thomas

Beethoven's massive Missa Solemnis, which the composer considered his greatest work, is not a Mass meant for church. It is too ecstatic to be simply solemn.

Ultimately, it is a mysterious Mass. Does the score reveal a skeptical, long-suffering composer in his last years resolving doubt, as some scholars have suggested? Or is the real subject not God but Beethoven, a revelation of the wonder of his genius?

Many major Beethoven conductors simply avoid the Missa Solemnis, not knowing what to make of it. Others obsess over it. Michael Tilson Thomas belongs to the obsessive class. He had long proposed a Missa Solemnis solution treating Beethoven's Mass as physical mass,...

Related "Michael Tilson Thomas" Articles

Beethoven's massive Missa Solemnis, which the composer considered his greatest work, is not a Mass meant for church. It is too ecstatic to be simply solemn.
Ultimately, it is a mysterious Mass. Does the score reveal a skeptical, long-suffering composer...

The propriety of projecting a composer's personal life onto how we hear and perform the music goes through fads. Half a century ago, the Bay Area was home to Apollonian musicologists who prized structural analysis and dismissed biography as gossip.
We...